


auspicium melioris aevi

by ButterflyGhost



Series: due South Wizard!Verse [18]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, due South
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-27
Updated: 2012-05-27
Packaged: 2017-11-06 03:06:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/414016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ButterflyGhost/pseuds/ButterflyGhost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the nature of hope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	auspicium melioris aevi

It shouldn't have surprised me when he stopped visiting, but it did. Over the years I had become used to him. Attached, I suppose. I was one of the few, the very few, who could expect visitors. You could always tell the newly sentenced, they were so stupidly hopeful. It took a while for the hope to be sucked out of them. The mothers whose children visited once, then never again. The wives whose husbands stopped coming. Sisters losing siblings, colleagues losing friends, all of us, one by one abandoned.

I hadn't expected any visitors at all, after my sister put in her penance. It didn't surprise me that it was once, and no more. It helped to have no hope. It didn't hurt as much.

And then he came, and damn it if he didn't come again, and again, and again. And that... that gave me hope. And with hope pain, but at least I was alive. We'd sit opposite each other, talk... God knows what we talked about, I could never exactly remember. But I learned about his doubts, about his family, about his mother, he learned about my sister, how we had been separated and sent into different foster families, how she had grown up hail and hearty, and I had grown up...

I can't believe I told him so much. I can't believe there was so much to tell.

And he made me feel... like a human being. Like someone could see me, someone could hear me. I mattered. To at least one other. He gave me hope.

And hope's a terrible thing. If you let it, it grows like a cancer, and eats you alive. It's worse than the Dementors. Pandora. People don't understand that story. They think hope was left in the box as a blessing. No. It was Pandora's last, and greatest curse.

So, he was cruel enough to give me hope. He gave me hope, then left. For months, and months and months. And I waited. Hoping. Hoping and hurting, and he didn't come.

After I'd given up hoping, he came again. I looked up to the guard smiling at me, that nasty expression she gets on her face. “Your boyfriend's back.” I can see she hates me, not just for being what I am, a criminal, but for having something... someone who visits, year after year. She'd sneered at me when he stopped visiting. Now that he's come back she looks like she wants to spit.

“I don't want to see him.”

“Really?” Oh, she likes that, I can tell from her face. “He'll stop coming if you throw a temper tantrum.”

“It's not a tantrum. I just don't want to see him.”

“Can I tell him that?”

“Yes.”

And she smiles, and goes off to rub in the bad news.

A month later he's back again, and this time I can't help myself. I have to see him, if only to tell him how much I hate him. But... when I see him, the words dry up on my tongue. He's looking wretched. Something has happened. Something has changed.

The first words out of his mouth are, “I'm sorry,” and damn me for a fool, I start crying. He stands up, tries to reach me... you think after all these years he'd have learned there's no point. He drops back into his seat, and just lets me cry it out. Then he says it again. “I'm so sorry. Something came up.”

Something more important than me, I think, but don't say. Instead, I blurt out a brittle little monosyllable. “What?”

“My... my father died.”

“Oh?” And why would that eat up six months, I want to ask, but I'm too tired to argue.

“He was murdered, and I had to solve it... and then...”

“Then?”

“Then the RCMP decided to banish me.”

“Where have you been?” It's the first sentence I've constructed in a month, since his last attempted visit, since my last conversation with the guard. My voice sounds dusty with disuse. 

“Chicago. They've sent me to Chicago, to work at the Canadian Consulate there.”

“It's a long way for you to come and visit.”

“I can apparate,” he says. “But it took some time to get permission from the Consulate. They investigated everything.”

“Did they?” I just about manage a laugh. “You work for Big Brother. What do you expect?”

He looks down at that, a twisted expression on his face. Oh, poor man... but I like to see him suffer, just as much as I like to see him smile. And damn him, now I hate him all over again, because he brought back hope.

“So, you solved your father's murder?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” I would be interested to hear the details, but not today. It's too hard to think.

“Victoria, are you... are you okay?”

“Tired. That's all. I'm tired.”

“It's only another six months,” he says, like an imbecile, and now I really do hate him.

“Only,” I say, “only? Only six months? Do you know how long a day is in here?” My throat hurts, I'm talking too much, should have eased back into it. If I wasn't so dry I'd be shouting. “Only six months? Well, aren't I the lucky one?”

“I'm sorry,” he says again, and it maddens me.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry... do you ever hear yourself? Stop apologising, it doesn't mean a damn thing.”

He brings his hands up to cover his face. He does that a lot... it's a common gesture in this place. People trying to cover themselves, hide from the weight of the Dementors. It hits me again that he's been visiting me for nearly a decade. And the anger melts away, and I could kiss him. If they'd let me, if it wasn't for the charm.

Silence falls, and it melts the tension between us. When he looks up, I know that he can sense it. A little bit of tenderness returns.

“Six months,” I say, and laugh. “Well, maybe I'll make it.”

“I'll be there,” he says, “when you get out.”

“The RCMP forbid it?”

“I'll be there.”

I push my hand across the table, as far as it will go, and he slides his hand toward me. There's maybe a millimetre between our finger tips. In six months he'll be able to touch me. And I'll be able to touch him.

And oh, the ways I'll touch him. The things I'll make him do.

He mistakes my smile, and I see it in his eyes. I've returned the bastard child to him. Hope. He has hope now, and it's my gift to him. By the time I'm done, hope will eat him alive.


End file.
